Italians line up behind Poland's sixth cellco

12 Oct 2007

Thomson Financial, citing the business daily Puls Biznesu, is reporting that Italian telecoms company Eutelia will take a stake in Polish consortium Mobyland, which plans to become the country’s sixth wireless network operator. ‘We haven’t yet decided what our share in the project will be,’ Robert Nardini, Eutelia’s head of foreign operations, told the newspaper. ‘The talks are ongoing, but we are not demanding a majority stake.’

Mobyland will pay PLN102 million (USD38.7 million) for a licence to operate over 1800MHz frequencies, after the original winner, CenterNet, opted to take up just one of the two sets of spectrum allocated to it in a tender last week. Nardini estimates Mobyland will spend between EUR250million and EUR300 million over five years. It hopes to launch services within twelve months.